11 comments:

You know what. The highest praise for a movie is how re-watchable you think it will be. I think John Carter is going to end of being a favorite re-watchable. Kind of a shame that the PR fire was so poorly executed. But even if it had got a lot of butts in the seat, it still would have got that initial confusion, meh, I-didn't get-it, reaction. Second time, you know where it's going, and really absorb what a great job was done making the Tharks a really well fleshed out race of beings.

I liked all the effects. I thought the actor who played J.C. was a little wooden (no jokes please about wood / J.C. / and the incomparable Dejah Thoris ... Like all origin movies, it suffers from the pain of getting our character to the spot where the action takes place.

The JC and Dejah actors could have used better casting. But the art shows through on how they used them.Dejah was not incomparable. So she wsn't compared. She wasn't surrounded by ladies in waiting that brought her down. You had Tharks and men to compare her too. She looks pretty good. Even with the suicide girl tats.John Carter had the physical frame. Very like Frazetta's idea for the character. His face needed help. It might have been good to cut his hair when he was in the baby pen. Right down to military brush.

Main thing that bugged me. Made it into a few of the reviews I read. The jumping needed to be smarter. A little game rule parameter type of rigor applied. His long leaps were like orbital launch events. How much better would it have been to have Carter tracking what was happening to Dejah when she first falls, cutting back and forth as he gets closer by leaps and bounds to maybe save her. Then he gets the range for the big jump. Instead, they have him launch before she has dropped! He's done. His jump has got velocity, arc, everything before Dejah falls. And she fortunately intersects his path on her way down.

All the problems go away if...? If they did the obvious. Make the whole world cg. I guess uncanny valley still worried them for their ambitions with this film. But I could watch that loving animation of the 4 armed Tharks all day.

It's been so long. I was straining my brain trying to re install my long ago comfort level with game design patois. "game rule parameter type of rigor" was what caused my pain. We used to call it "metrics." Character metrics. What the character can do when you push the button.